The sale of Commonwealth Games tickets has been suspended while problems that have caused long delays for customers are addressed.

Glasgow 2014 chief executive David Grevemberg apologised "unreservedly" to people affected and said the ticketing website and phone line would be closed from 6pm on Tuesday.

An extra 100,000 tickets across all 17 sports and the opening and closing ceremonies went on sale yesterday, but problems quickly developed with people facing long delays and issues with completing transactions. Around 55,000 tickets have so far been sold, organisers said.

Grevemberg said Ticketmaster, which operates the website, had been told to close it along with the call centre set up to handle sales. It means no further customers will be able to join the website queue or access the call centre, but customers already logged on to the website should be able to complete their transaction.

He said: "We want the purchase of Commonwealth Games tickets through the Ticketmaster system to be a positive experience for all customers and we realise this has not been the case for many.

"We thank everyone for their patience and apologise unreservedly to everyone who has been affected and inconvenienced by this disappointing situation.

"We have sold more than 55,000 tickets since we opened the ticketing website yesterday and there will still be a great range of tickets available for most sports and the ceremonies when we re-open.

"We will not allow the frustrations experienced by our customers throughout the last day and a half to continue further. We will only re-open the site once Ticketmaster is confident that the issues with the website have been resolved."

Some sports fans took to Twitter to express their frustrations at the system. Pauline Lynch wrote: "You might not believe me but it took me 31 hours of queuing to secure commonwealth tickets. 31 hours."

Kelly Ross tweeted: "After 24hrs I have just managed to get opening ceremony tickets to the commonwealth games."

About 2.3m applications were made for the initial one million tickets released last year, with athletics, aquatics and cycling proving the hottest tickets.